


accidentally?

by bibliosexual



Series: Tumblr fic [17]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Office, Boss/Employee Relationship, Dick Pics, Getting Together, M/M, Spanish Translation Available
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-10
Updated: 2017-04-10
Packaged: 2018-10-17 08:50:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10590561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bibliosexual/pseuds/bibliosexual
Summary: BOSS: “know why I called you in here?”ME: “because I accidentally sent you a dick pic”BOSS [stops pouring 2 glasses of wine]: “accidentally?”yup.Or, in which Derek receives a surprising email one morning.





	

**Author's Note:**

> A note on the rating: This is probably more like Teen, but I gave it a Mature just in case. It's purely because of the dick pic thing; there's no sex. 
> 
> This was originally posted [here](http://bibliosexxual.tumblr.com/post/158422508106/accidentally) on my tumblr and was based on [this tweet/prompt](http://bibliosexxual.tumblr.com/post/158053235816/reinventlou-someone-turn-this-into-a-fic-ill).
> 
> Spanish translation available [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11438448) thanks to yuki_happy!

“You need to stop pining after people you haven’t even spoken to,” Lydia says one day, probably because Derek—er, Mr. Hale, their boss—has just stepped through the front door of the cafe where they’re having lunch, and Stiles has trailed off mid-word to watch him walk up to the counter. In Stiles’ defense, he’s never seen Mr. Hale outside of the office before, let alone Mr. Hale wearing a leather jacket over his dress shirt. God, and Stiles thought the tailored suits were bad enough…

Anyway.

“Uh, I have _too_ spoken to him,” Stiles says indignantly, tearing his eyes away from Derek’s broad back across the room. “One day I was coming out of the break room and I almost walked right into him and he said, ‘Excuse me,’ so then I said, ‘Oops,’ and he smiled at me. Kind of. A little bit. I mean, I interpreted it as a smile. There was some prolonged eye contact.”

Lydia abruptly stops stirring her fat-free latte to stare at him—one of those _Oh god, it’s worse than I thought_ kind of looks. “That’s it?”

“ _No_. I wasn’t finished,” Stiles says. “We also ate lunch together last Monday. I forgot to bring my lunch, so I was just eating a bag of chips from the vending machine and he offered me half his tuna sandwich.”

It had been one of the nicest office lunch breaks he’d ever had, actually. Stiles was sitting on the low brick wall at the edge of the picnic area, and to his surprise, Derek sat down there, too, in his probably-thousand-dollar suit, while Stiles gaped at him a little for doing it. 

Derek had then continued to sit there even after giving away the sandwich. It had been clear from the way he kept glancing at Stiles that he didn’t know what to say but he wanted to say _something_ , so Stiles had prompted, “Got any weekend plans?” and Derek had said he didn’t have any, so Stiles had rambled for a while about his weekend plans, which involved going down to San Francisco for the weekend for a Bastille concert. Derek sat there and listened attentively the whole time, which, in Stiles’ experience, not many people would do. He also said he didn’t know who Bastille was. That was a little surprising, but then again, Stiles supposed Derek didn’t have a lot of time to absorb pop culture, what with running the foundation and owning a dog and all.

He’d obviously had a bit of time at that moment, though, so Stiles had pulled out his phone and played Derek some of their songs, and Derek had nodded his head subtly to the beat and smiled a little and instantly made Stiles’ crush on him a whole lot more intense.

“And that’s it,” he concludes now. “So do you think he’s into me at all?“

“How should I know? I’m not a mind reader.”

“Coulda fooled me,” Stiles mutters, thinking about all the times she’s guessed ahead of time what he was going to get her for her birthday and all the times she’s taken one look at him and known with an uncanny certainty that he’s just gotten laid or, more commonly, that he’s just spent the whole night playing video games and ignoring life’s responsibilities.

Now Lydia sighs. “Look, all I know is, office romances are tricky. Even if he is interested, he’d probably feel like he can’t ask you out because of the power dynamic. You’ll have to make the first move.”

“Yeah, right,” Stiles snorts.

Lydia raises her eyebrows like, _I thought so_. “Stiles…” she says, “as your friend who’s concerned for your happiness, I’m going to ask you something: Have you gone on a single date in the last month? The last _six_ months?”

Stiles resists the urge to squirm under her knowing gaze. She could be a world-class interrogator if she ever wanted a career change. “Okay, but… I’ve been busy, okay? It has nothing to do with Der— Mr. Hale. As if. That’s ridiculous. Totally ludicrous.”

“I see,” Lydia says, unimpressed.

The next thing he knows, she’s installing a dating app on his phone and filling in a profile that’s a hundred times more charming and put-together than anything Stiles could’ve come up with on his own and finagling a promise out of him that he’ll at least give it a decent try.

Stiles gives his word, but privately he wonders if he can keep it.

It was actually Derek who inspired Stiles to apply to work at the Howls for Change Foundation to begin with. The local newspaper interviewed him a couple of years ago about the foundation, back when it was just starting up. Stiles had been just skimming, not planning to sit down and read the paper for half an hour, but that’s just what he ended up doing, drawn in by Derek’s interview—his enthusiasm and love for wolves, his eloquence in replying to the journalist’s questions, the accompanying picture of him… He was in jogging clothes, crouched on a trail out in the woods somewhere and hugging his German Shepherd while flashing the camera a rare, genuine smile so bright it made Stiles feel warm all over, and yeah, Stiles applied to this job about 75% because he loved wildlife conservation and about 25% because he wanted to see Derek Hale smile like that again, and possibly be the one to make him do it.

The feeling has only gotten stronger since then.

Derek likes to act like he’s just one of the employees, even though he’s not only the boss but also the organization’s founder. He has his own corner office, but he mainly just uses it for meeting with local policymakers and other bigwigs. The rest of the time, he has a cubicle where he plugs away on his laptop or just sits contemplatively, eating an apple or listening to music on an old CD player he keeps in the top drawer. He eats lunch outside in the picnic area with his employees, too, when it’s nice out. He brings bag lunches from home, which Stiles finds oddly charming.

Still, Stiles can see Derek is set apart. No matter how much he acts like he’s just an employee, no one ever forgets he’s the boss. When he walks into the break room, a hush always falls, and if they were talking about something gossipy or off-color before he walked in, they always hastily change the subject to something more workplace-appropriate and bland, like the weather or what’s for lunch, and Derek nods politely at them, gets his coffee, and leaves without a word. Stiles thinks he looks kind of lonely. He always comes off as hardworking and unpretentious, but he also doesn’t seem that fond of small talk or smiling, and it clearly makes a lot of people feel awkward around him.

For all the great work Derek is doing in the conservation world, he doesn’t seem to have a lot of friends.

Even so, the thought of Stiles asking him out and Derek actually saying yes… Well. It’s laughable, really.

So Lydia says, “Promise me you’ll at least try the app?” and Stiles says he will.

*

Two weeks and several mediocre first dates later, Stiles is sitting in a budget meeting at 9 a.m. on a Monday morning, poking at his phone under the table. He doesn’t make any attempt to stay on task first; whenever Greenberg starts talking in these meetings, like clockwork Stiles always gets this unbearable itch to look at his phone or pick at his nails or even just stare blankly out the window, anything but listen to him.

He deletes a dozen spam emails and replies to a couple punny texts from Scott from last night before he finally, reluctantly thumbs over to his unread messages on the dating app. By this point he’s not very optimistic. Turns out he was right to be, because someone has sent him an unsolicited dick pic.

Instinctively he sinks down a little lower in his seat. It turns out to be an unnecessary precaution, though. One glance around confirms it: the woman to his left is absorbed in doodling Power Rangers on her notepad, and the man to his right is gazing straight ahead into space, so zoned out he’s practically comatose.

Stiles looks back down at his phone.

It’s a nice dick pic, objectively. Very artistic, very tasteful. The guy, whose head is cropped out of the photo, is sprawled on his back on a turquoise sheet, soft sunlight falling on his naked torso, one long-fingered hand curled lazily around his erection. A+ for aesthetics.

Still, Stiles did not wake up this morning after only three hours of sleep (what can he say, he got distracted by Wikipedia again) just so he could see a complete stranger’s junk.

The sad thing is, this isn’t even the first time this has happened, or the third, or the fifth… Would it kill these guys to say hello first?

Stiles screenshots it, then pastes it into a new email to Lydia (he’s been keeping her apprised of his dating app adventures, at her insistence). He captions it with a grumpy, “guess how my morning is going.”

She’s the one who thought this app would be such a great idea in the first place. Maybe now, face-to-face with what Stiles has had to put up with on a daily basis for the past two weeks, she’ll finally admit the whole online dating thing was a bad idea and stop shooting him pitying looks whenever the subject of Derek Hale comes up.

After that, he blocks the dick-pic-sender and puts his phone away. Greenberg is still talking, still meticulously going over lots of hard-to-read charts, and Stiles’ gaze inevitably wanders to fall on Derek instead. Derek, who’s sitting at the head of the table, looking at something on his phone and not even trying to hide it.

Stiles supposes if you’re the founder of the company, you don’t have to pretend to be paying attention while Greenberg talks.

Derek’s phone buzzes in his hand; Stiles can just barely hear it. Derek taps at the screen while lifting his glass of water to his mouth, and then he must read something shocking because he simultaneously spits out his water all over his notes and starts coughing furiously, doubling over like he’s _dying_ , his phone clattering to the table.

Greenberg momentarily stops his monotone speech, hovering like he’s not sure what to do, while pretty much everyone around the table freezes up except for the vice president, Boyd, who’s sitting next to him and never seems even remotely fazed by anything. He pounds Derek heartily on the back a couple times.

It seems to help. After a long half minute, the coughing fit passes. Derek looks up, red-faced, and rasps, “I’m okay.”

Hesitantly, Greenberg starts talking again. Derek straightens his tie and puts his phone away, and Stiles’ fellow employees go back to slumping in their seats with blank, I’m-bored-out-of-my-mind expressions on their faces, and that’s that.

Stiles can’t help wondering what it was Derek saw that got such a reaction out of him. Whatever it was, it’s guaranteed to be more interesting than this meeting.

Ah, well. Stiles will probably never know.

Or so he thinks until about half an hour later, when his phone buzzes with a new email from Derek—the only email he’s ever gotten from Derek, not counting the company-wide newsletters and memos.

It’s a good thing Stiles finishes pouring his coffee before taking a look at it, because otherwise he probably would have scalded the skin of his hand off and spilled coffee all over his shoes and the break room floor in the process.

The subject line reads, “re: guess how my morning is going.”

Stiles freezes.

Blinks.

Closes out of his email app and opens it again.

The email is still there. It’s still titled "re: guess how my morning is going.” Stiles didn’t misread it.

He’s pretty sure he doesn’t breathe for a solid five minutes while he lets the mingled surges of horror and adrenaline wash over him. It’s like one of those nightmares he used to have in high school where he’d stand up in class to give a presentation, only to look down and realize he was inexplicably buck-ass naked and everyone was laughing at him.

Finally he sucks in enough air to gasp, "Oh god. I’m dead. I’m so dead.” There’s no one else in the break room, but he still says it. It seems like the kind of momentous occasion that needs stating out loud to the universe.

Then he chugs his entire mug of coffee and speed-walks as casually as possible down the hall. A few people glance at him curiously from their cubicles, probably because he’s blushing so hard he looks like a tomato on the verge of a nervous breakdown, or possibly because no one runs in this office, anywhere, for any reason. Dignity is the name of the game. Stiles has none.

Stiles ignores them all in favor of diving into Lydia’s office and slamming the door shut behind him. He doesn’t care what work she might be doing; this is more important. This is a crisis.

She must get some sense of that from the look on his face, or maybe from the way he’s slumped back against the door and panting, because she doesn’t snap at him or even look that annoyed.

Stiles waves his phone at her and tries, in a rambling and adrenaline-fueled outburst, to explain. He’s not sure how much of it is actually anything bordering on _English_ , but he thinks he ultimately conveys the important bits.

While he talks, Lydia rests her elbows on her desk, steepling her fingers, and looks intrigued. “So,” she says when he finally runs out of breath, “what did Derek actually say?”

“I don’t know!” Stiles says, only a little hysterically.

“You didn’t read the email?“

Stiles shakes his head, sheepish. She’s undoubtedly judging him so hard right now, and he knows, okay. He _knows_.

Lydia lets out one of her trademark "why am I surrounded by incompetence” sighs and holds out her hand for his phone. Stiles meekly hands it over.

Lydia unlocks it without asking him for the passcode, which suggests either that Stiles needs to make his passwords stronger or that they spend entirely too much time together. Then she reads, and Stiles chews on his thumbnail and practices the breathing exercises his therapist taught him.

Lydia hands his phone back after only half a minute, her expression softening to something almost sympathetic. That’s when Stiles truly comprehends how truly, _apocalyptically_ bad this is. Lydia _never_ looks sympathetic.

“Well?” Stiles croaks.

“It just says he’d like you to come see him in his office as soon as you get a chance.”

Stiles has never heard anything so ominous.

“You shouldn’t keep him waiting,” she says gently. “Go get it over with, and while you’re doing that, I’ll write you a glowing recommendation letter.”

A recommendation letter. To take with him when he gets fired. Oh god.

*

When Stiles edges into Derek’s office, Derek is standing over by the window. He looks stunning as usual, tailored suit perfectly accenting the powerful lines of his body, but his ears are kind of pink. He’s got out a bottle of wine and two glasses on a little trolley table; he must have an important meeting with a big client later today. Stiles will probably never find out about it, though, seeing as he’s about to get fired and all.

“Stiles,” Derek nods.

Stiles would reply, but he’s afraid nothing will come out but an unmanly squeak, so instead he just focuses on perching on the edge of the nearest chair. He’s never actually been in Derek’s office before. It’s very _Derek_ ; it reminds him of the woods, lots of earth tones and accents of green. If not for the circumstances, Stiles would probably find it calming. As it is, he’s not sure he would find anything calming right now, except maybe a Xanax.

“Do you know why I called you in here?“ Derek asks.

Oh god, does he have to say it _out loud_? It’s not like they don’t both know already. Stiles opens his mouth, and no words come out. His mind is one long internal scream. All he can do is clutch the arms of his chair and watch as Derek uncorks the wine and starts pouring it into the first glass with intimidating casualness. He looks like he’s not mad at all. It’s terrifying.

Finally Stiles manages to force the words out. “Because I accidentally sent you a dick pic.”

Derek stops pouring wine into the second glass. “Accidentally?”

“Yes!” Stiles says, latching onto that word like a lifeline. Is it even legal to fire someone for an accident? Well. Probably yes, if it results in somebody’s arm getting lopped off or something, but a dick pic isn’t quite on that level. Stiles hopes so, anyway. “And it wasn’t even _my_ dick!”

Derek puts down the bottle of wine completely. “So… your boyfriend’s…?”

Stiles shakes his head. “Don’t have one.”

“So you’re saying you sent me porn.”

Stiles groans and drops his head to his hands. He can’t look at Derek right now; he’s already reached maximum mortification levels. “No, I, um, so the thing is, I have Lydia Martin down in my email contacts as ‘Divine Goddess,’ which alphabetically puts her next to you, so I accidentally emailed the dick pic to _you_ when I meant to email it to _her_ , and before you say anything, I know I’m not supposed to send explicit materials over the company email and I swear it won’t happen again.” Assuming Stiles ever gets another chance to use his company email, that is, but he’s not going to be the one to point that out.

There’s a long silence, and Stiles risks a peek up through his fingers. Derek is frowning at him, but not like he’s angry. More like he’s confused. “Isn’t Lydia married? To a woman?”

 _That_ makes Stiles forget for a moment about being embarrassed. He sits up straight, flailing his hands in a chopping motion. “Whoa, no, it’s definitely not like that. It’s not a flirting thing. We’re just friends, and you’re right, she and Allison are very happily married and I’d never do anything to get between that. Ever. It’s just, she set me up for an online dating profile recently and I kind of hate it because I keep getting dick pics, so that pic you saw was like, like a status update. Like, ‘Look how terribly this is going, I hate all of these dudes sending me dick pics because none of them are you'—”

Shit. He bites his tongue so hard he’s surprised he doesn’t taste blood, because nope, what the fuck, that was not supposed to be a part of this conversation, and now Derek’s grip on the neck of the wine bottle has gone white-knuckled and he’s just staring at Stiles, all deer-in-the-headlights.

Not for the first time in his life, or even the hundredth, Stiles wishes he had the power to rewind the last ten or so seconds of what just happened and start over. Unfortunately, no such luck.

“Just to clarify, I didn’t mean to imply that I want you to send me a pic of your dick,” Stiles blurts. “I just meant in a, um, a purely romantic sense, no one on that app is as good as… yeah.” Stiles trails off because Derek’s eyes are continuing to widen, and that’s probably not good. “Oh god, I’m making this worse. I shouldn’t be allowed to talk.”

Derek still doesn’t say anything. Maybe it’s an interrogation tactic or maybe (probably) he’s just in shock.

Either way, Stiles feels compelled to break the silence. “Are you going to fire me?” he asks tentatively, after what feels like the longest and most awkward minute of his life to date.

Derek finally blinks and relaxes his death-grip on the wine bottle. “I’d be crazy to fire you. You’re one of my best employees.”

“Except for the whole dick pic thing,” Stiles points out, risking a smile, and Derek smiles back. Stiles feels a little of the oh-god-I’m-about-to-get-fired tension leave him, and in its place the usual oh-god-I’m-in-the-presence-of-Derek-Hale tension starts creeping back in. That’s a lot more familiar, and a lot more exciting.

“Oh, I don’t know, I didn’t…” Derek starts, looking away out the window and then nervously meeting Stiles’ eyes. “I didn’t mind the dick pic thing so much. Not when it was from you.”

It’s Stiles’ turn to stare in shock.

Derek spins jerkily on his heel and picks up one of the wine glasses and starts chugging it down, and okay. Maybe Stiles isn’t the only one who’s pretty nervous right now. That thought makes Stiles a whole lot _less_ nervous, and he stands up and moves around the desk while it lasts. Derek turns his head a little. Stiles reaches up and takes the glass away and sets it down on the table.

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have— It’s not professional—” Derek starts.

“I would send you a picture of my dick if you asked,” Stiles blurts, and it feels like one of the bravest and most romantic things he’s ever said.

“I would send you one, too,” Derek says, blushing furiously.

That basically shreds the last bit of Stiles’ self-control. He grabs Derek’s fancy silk tie and tugs, and, before he can second-guess it, kisses Derek Hale the way he deserves to be kissed, thoroughly and so enthusiastically that Derek ends up sinking back to lean against his desk like his knees just won’t hold him up anymore.

“So, just to clarify,” Stiles pants, resting a hand on Derek’s chest and thrilling that he can _do_ that now, “I’m definitely not fired.”

Derek rolls his eyes and pulls him back in.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic & more can be found [on my tumblr](http://bibliosexxual.tumblr.com/). :)


End file.
